by submission | Jan 11, 2015 | Story |
Author : Michael Hughes
Remer opened his eyes, but the room was coming into focus more slowly than it should have. The synthetic glare of the fluorescent bulbs made it difficult to think. Where was he?
He searched his mind for the last thing he could remember, but kept coming up blank. The harder he thought, the more he realized he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember anything beside his name. He had no sense of time to help process how long he’d been out. He could sense the shells of memories that should’ve been there, but they were empty: a void of a memory that no longer existed within his mind.
Then he heard voices. His hearing was coming back now, but his eyes still hadn’t been able to focus on his surroundings. The voices were speaking, but not to him. He could clearly hear the words they were saying, but they held no meaning. The words they spoke were as empty as his memories. He felt he should understand them, but again, nothing came.
Finally, his eyes began to focus and the view he was presented with was completely foreign. He was lying on a table of sorts, perhaps an operating table. Had he been injured? Trying to access his memories was useless and he made no serious effort to follow that train of thought.
He wanted answers. Perhaps the voices, now belonging to strangers who stood near the table, could provide them. He tried to speak, but no words came. He struggled and lifted his head, again trying to muster the strength to speak. But nothing came.
The strangers noticed his movement and quickly surrounded the table muttering more empty words. Their tone was urgent. Not yet harsh, but something was definitely bothering them. He tried again to speak, this time a small squeak managed to escape his mouth. One of the strangers stopped and looked him in the eyes.
He said something to the others and they stopped as well. All of them now focused on Remer’s face. The first stranger said something to Remer, but he still couldn’t understand him. The tension built inside Remer’s mind, he knew he should be able to understand them! The stranger repeated the phrase. Tears of frustration began to build in the corners of Remer’s eyes. He tried to respond. He gave everything ounce of effort he had in him! And it worked!
“Where am I?”
The words were weak and no more audible than a single drop of rain on a forest floor in the spring. If the other strangers hadn’t been so focused on him, it’s likely they never would’ve heard it.
As soon as he uttered the words, memories and understanding flooded Remer’s mind. He could understand the strangers now. It was as if the words he spoke shattered a mighty dam that held back the very fabric of his being.
He turned to the first stranger, who he now recognized as a doctor, and asked one simple question, “Why am I here?”
The man looked him in the eyes, his face grave and bathed in sorrow.
“Mr. Remer, you are not who you think you are.”
“What do you mean? I had some trouble remembering when I first woke up, but now everything is clear. I am Jonathan Remer, CEO of Remer Industries. I run one of the largest medical cloning facilities in the Western Hemis….”
His words trailed off. He was a smart man and realized now the gravity of the situation.
“I am a clone, aren’t I?”
But he already knew the answer.
One of the other doctors approached him carrying a syringe, a single tear forming in the corner of her eye.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
He didn’t resist as the needle entered his arm. The room began to fade to black. He thought he heard faint weeping.
Then everything fell silent.
by submission | Jan 10, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
(Thunderous applause over a musical flourish)
“Thank you! And welcome to ‘Interview With A Dictator’! We’ve got the old quantum teleporter warmed up and ready, so let’s bring on tonight’s guest!”
(Applause)
(Computer voiceover) “Tonight we have a despot from ancient Earth who ruled the Italian nation-state circa 8048 BN, Galactic Calendar, or 1922 to 1943 on the old Earth calendar. We’ve locked on to his coordinates and are ready for transport.”
“Folks, let’s welcome ‘Il Duce’ himself: Benito Mussolini!”
(Thunderous applause. A flash of light and a tired-appearing, heavyset man materializes in the chair opposite the host. The newly-arrived man looks terrified and confused. The chair’s armrests extrude themselves around his wrists to form manacles. The chair’s legs similarly bind his feet.)
“Where am I?! Who are you?! What is this place?!”
“Benito, I’m Davvit Ril-Watyn and you’re on ‘Interview With A Dictator,’ the Milky Way’s highest rated talk show. Now, you and your mistress, Claretta Petacci, are about to be machine gunned to death by anti-fascist partisans in the Italian village of Giulino de Mezzegra at the end of the Second World War in your subjective reference frame. We’ve brought you forward in time to what on your calendar would be the year AD 6893. We also installed a translator device in your brain during your teleport so you can understand and speak in Galactic Standard. The laws of physics will only let you remain with us for a minute or two after which you will rematerialize back in 1945 and die. So let’s have an…”
(Audience in unison) “Interview With A Dictator!”
(Mussolini trembles, perspires profusely) “This is madness! This is a dream!”
(Ril-Watyn leans in with his elbows on the desk, cradling his chin in his hands) “Ben, the Italian and German fascist militaries had exquisite uniforms. But it seems like the better-dressed armies always lose to sartorially inferior enemies. Do you think your impeccable sense of style was a tactical mistake?”
(The Italian struggles with his bonds) “I must leave here! Let me go!”
“I wouldn’t be in too big of a hurry if I were you, Ben.” (Ril-Watyn lowers his voice to a faux-whisper) “They’re going to hang your corpse upside down from the roof of a gas station using meat hooks.”
(Audience groans, Ril-Watyn smiles and shrugs) “Well, they are.” (Audience laughs)
“Okay, Ben, let’s get down to brass tacks. We all know that another fascist dictator got the spotlight while you — let’s be brutally honest here — had to play second fiddle. Why was that? Was it the mustache, you think?”
(Mussolini stares wild-eyed at Ril-Watyn) “You are working for that communist, Walter Audisio! You are doing this to torture me before you kill me!”
“Hold that thought, Ben. It’s time to put in a word for this cycle’s sponsor, ‘New You’. When you decide it’s time to change species, trust the species-reassignment company with over 2,000 years of experience. Trust ‘New You’. Now, Ben, even after almost 5,000 Earth-years, the word ‘Italy’ is still synonymous across the galaxy with great food. Let’s talk about fettuccine alfredo.”
(Buzzer sounds)
“Oh, Ben, I’m sorry but we’re out of time.”
“Let me go! I have money hidden away! I will give you a fortune!”
“Sorry, Ben, I’m afraid you died 4,948 years ago…right now.”
(A flash of light, the chair is empty)
“Folks, the very late Benito Mussolini!”
(Applause and whistles)
“Next week on the show: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as ‘Caligula’! Good night, folks!”
by submission | Jan 9, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rollin T Gentry
In the lift, Lieutenant Andrews asked herself how she, of the two hundred telepaths in the fleet, had been so unlucky as to be assigned to the Vulcan’s Anvil, a third rate science vessel with an idiot for a Captain. She wondered what his latest discovery was. What had he dragged out of the nebula this time?
Stepping into the lab, Andrews could see the Captain, and the Chief Science Officer huddled over something emitting a bright, red-orange glow. As she approached, she saw a metallic box, the contents of which looked like lava throwing a temper tantrum. The stuff rocked back and forth as if it were trying to escape its container. She stepped closer and felt the most intense rage she had ever encountered.
“Eject it now,” she said. “I haven’t attempted to make contact yet, and I feel pure evil radiating from that box.”
“So it is sentient,” the Captain said eagerly, nudging the Chief Science Officer who, like a giddy schoolgirl, chimed in, “The box is made of an element that isn’t even on our periodic table.”
“Scan it, Andrews,” the Captain said. “That’s an order.”
So she reached out and touched it. The white hot rage reached into her mind, and as she lost consciousness, she let out a blood-curdling scream.
Andrews opened her eyes inside a bulbous body covered with a layer of slime. She paced the floor atop a multitude of tentacles, waving other tentacles in the air. She spoke angry words from a flap on her face set below numerous eyes. She/he was the ruler of this world. “Tell me again how you found the Queen with this commoner.”
“There is nothing more to tell, my Lord. What will you have me do with them?”
“Her lover goes to the dungeon. Rip off his tentacles and gouge out his eyes and take your time about it. As for the Queen, have her bound and delivered to our bedchamber. I will discipline her myself.”
Lieutenant Andrews tried to close her eyes, but they were not her eyes to close. She lived out the fast-forwarded life of a despot from a race that humans had yet to encounter.
When he laid waste to the temples of their ancient religion, the commoners finally rebelled. Andrews felt his surprise and disgust as he stood before the three priests, resting their upper tentacles on a slab of white marble, looking down on him. “According to the old ways,” they said, “we do not kill. Repent, and we will heal your mind.”
“Repent!” he laughed. “Heal me?” he mocked. “Of what? My rage is justified, and one day I will rise again.”
“So be it,” they said. The small, metal box sat on the floor. The tentacles of the priests began to glow. Andrews felt herself melting and materializing inside the sealed box.
For a long time he was in darkness, but after years of ruminating and rocking back and forth, he glowed red and yellow and black molten with rage. Memories and hatred were his only companions. Until one day.
The creatures had two eyes and two upper tentacles, and as he gazed up at them he thought, “I will kill every last one of you.”
Andrews opened her eyes in the infirmary. “Did they eject the box?”
“No,” the Doctor said, “we’re taking it back to Science Central.” He injected something into her IV.
“No!” Andrews said. “It wants to kill…” she whispered, as she fell back into a sedated slumber.
by submission | Jan 8, 2015 | Story |
Author : Connor Harbison
The villagers accepted the occupation as a fact of life. After all, where were they to go? The spaceport was heavily guarded, the surrounding jungles were filled with ravenous monsters and cannibal tribes, and beyond them the jagged mountains offered even less safety.
The soldiers knew the plight of the villagers. They knew that high command would never learn of any abuses committed in this backwater. Their discipline grew lenient. Soldiers frequently pilfered the food stores or kidnapped the pretty daughters of the villagers. The people were powerless to stop the soldiers, who were armed with plasma rifles and advanced armor. By and large the villagers submitted to the tyranny.
There was one boy for whom the injustice was too much. Though he had not yet hit puberty, the boy had more resistance in him than the rest of the village put together. Each transgression fed the fire burning in the pit of the boy’s stomach.
One day it was too much. A squad of soldiers pushed the boy’s neighbors about, stealing the food for which they had toiled. The boy picked up a rock from underfoot and lunged at the nearest soldier, aiming for his head. The rock bounced harmlessly off the soldier’s helmet, and the boy was the laughingstock of the squad. The sergeant thought the boy deserved a lesson, so the soldiers entered the boy’s house, dragged his family into the street, and executed them one by one.
Through blinding tears the boy fled the village. The soldiers took aim, but the sergeant called them off. The wild would take care of the boy. They had the family’s house to loot.
Years passed, and the village remained under the iron grip of occupation. The sergeant rose through the ranks, until he was made captain, in charge of the entire garrison. It was not a bad position. He ruled like a king, the village his own fiefdom.
One rainy night a stranger, dressed in rags, wandered into the village. The sentries were confused; the only way into the village was by air. Travel over land was impossible. The stranger approached them, though their laser sights hovered over his heart. When the stranger was two paces away the sentries heard a whistling sound, then nothing more.
The stranger reached down to relieve the corpses of their weapons, taking care to avoid the poison darts that protruded in the crack between helmet and breast plate. The stranger tossed a plasma rifle to one of his companions and kept one for himself.
They worked through the rain-soaked streets of the village, dispatching soldier after soldier with silent poison darts. Soon the stranger and his whole band were armed with plasma rifles. They began to converge on the barracks.
The captain was sleeping when a soft knock came from outside the door. He roused himself from bed, cursing whoever had the temerity to interrupt his slumber. Opening the door, the captain found himself staring down the barrels of half a dozen rifles.
By the time the captain reached the main square a small crowd of villagers had gathered. Heavily armed tribals stood menacingly on the periphery. The captain looked to the center and saw the stranger, and a spark of recognition flew through his synapses. The boy had returned, after long years in the jungle, having gained the friendship and loyalty of the cannibal tribes. As the captain faced down the firing squad, he knew he would only be the first of many.
by submission | Jan 7, 2015 | Story |
Author : Elijah Goering
The light from the unstable star took four hours to reach the scientific survey ship that was orbiting it. Consequently, it was four hours after the warning was sent before the ship’s one man crew reacted to it. The star was now too unstable, and the jump gate would have to be closed.
The jump gate, requiring rather a lot of energy to operate, orbited the star at a distance of just one light second. Although the warning was weeks in advance of the closing of the jump gate, it still felt a little late to the lone researcher billions of kilometers from the jump gate.
For nine and a half hours the man lay in his bed sustained by the ship’s machinery as his ship accelerated toward the star at three standard gravities, using up a little over two thirds of his fuel. The remainder was reserved for slowing down once he had passed through the jump gate. The ship would never be retrieved, but at least if he slowed down enough he could be saved.
After the acceleration came free fall. The man floated around his ship for weeks and watched the evacuation of the solar system. The private ships of the wealthy went through first. Then the massive government transports carrying the population of the system’s inhabited planet. The people from the moons of the gas giants came behind them. Then the colonized asteroids, outfitted with powerful engines, fell from their orbits in precise spirals. One by one they passed through the jump gate. Research vessels from around the system went through at all stages, but none had been nearly as far as the deep space explorer four point three billion kilometers out. He could only watch as they all went through.
The last ship through the jump gate was the enormous space station which had anchored the space elevator above the planet. It had disconnected from the elevator at precisely the right moment and been flung toward the sun and right into the jump gate.
At last the man was left alone, light years from the nearest human being. He spent long hours each day staring at the jump gate, his only remaining link with his species. There was no way to tell whether or not it had been deactivated. It was pure black, absorbing all light that hit it. The station that encircled and housed it appeared black as well, silhouetted against the dying star behind it. If it was still active he would pass through it and find himself flying away from another star light years away. If not, it would do nothing to stop him from plunging into the dying star at a thousand kilometers per second.
It was seven weeks after he had received the message when the day, the hour, and the minute arrived. The computer needed no adjustments after it had set its course forty nine days before. It was only in the last second that the jump gate finally came close enough for the man to see it with his own naked eyes.
